


Murdercats

by Guede



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Transformation, Cats, Crack Treated Seriously, Dubious Morality, Humor, M/M, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 02:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16652197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Deaton saves the Hales.  He lives to regret this.(The Hales are turned into cats, and Stiles adopts them.)





	Murdercats

“I am sorry,” Deaton says helplessly. “I don’t know—I was just trying to save you from dying. I just—I tried.”

Peter swipes angrily at Deaton’s hand, then shivers miserably. Flakes of burnt fur float up into the air, and in the towel bundle on Deaton’s other side, the yowls start up again. They’re pitiful and full of pain, and sound _disturbingly_ like human babies. Deaton winces and automatically ducks his head, looking about to see if they’ve been noticed. The woods around the burning Hale house are filled with emergency-response personnel, as well as curious onlookers, but he doesn’t think he can rely on that to shield them from attention. It’s already a suspicious fire and he can’t afford to end up on the list of suspects. Not now.

“I need to go get the car,” he tells the towels, pushing them gently into the leaf-litter. The cats hiss and the folds move in slow, protesting motions, but he continues pushing up the leaves around them. “Talia. Talia, if you can hear me—I can’t carry everyone, and I don’t think they’ll let me back through the police line multiple times. I need to get the car close enough and then we can go all at once, so keep them quiet till I can come back.”

They’re going to die, Peter thinks savagely, and then a breeze ruffles through the burns on his back and he’s in too much pain to think. Pure animal self has taken over, at all levels of consciousness, and it has him put his head down and narrow his nostrils against the stinging smell of burnt flesh, and—and yes, has him purr to himself. Mindless, stupid purring, that won’t do a damn thing for his injuries or his family’s injuries or the fact that they are now _cats_ , but for some reason, he thinks it’ll make him feel better.

It doesn’t. It does, however, move the leaves enough to catch Stiles’ eye about fifteen minutes later. Stiles turns away from the huge column of smoke in the air, fluffs off the litter, and then yelps as five pairs of eyes stare warily at him.

“Oh, shit,” he says.

Talia growls. Stiles twitches back and then ducks down and squints, and his eyes widen. He stuffs his hand against his mouth, then takes it out and hurriedly strips off his coat.

“Oh, my God, you have babies,” he says. “Oh, shit. Okay. Um. I have no cats but I have the Internet and had rabies shots just last month. Um, long story but I think they’re still good? Vaccines don’t expire, right? Um, anyway, we gotta get you guys out of here.”

This is not something Talia or Peter or the children are going to disagree with, so they go with it, and never mind Deaton. Frankly, if they never see him again, they’d be fine with that. He turned them into _cats_.

* * *

Of course they see Deaton again. Beacon Hills isn’t that big.

“I’m sorry!” he says, looking no more composed than the last time they saw him. “I’m sorry, I really am, I just—I’m looking into it and I’m sure there has to be a way to reverse it, but I haven’t found it yet. And besides, Talia, we also haven’t found out who burned down your house.”

Actually, they have, because even though they’re cats, they’re still intelligent, and when all you can do is yowl and shit and yowl and resentfully watch Stiles tape makeshift anti-scratch mittens onto your paws, you have some time to exchange notes. Derek is very ashamed of himself, as he should be.

Derek is also losing weight at an alarming rate, because he’s not eating, so when Stiles pops his head back in the room to see what all the screaming is about, Deaton blathers on about special diets and IVs and Stiles clutches his stack of cat magazines to him and Peter can _see_ the exponential curve of the boy’s research to-do list. Stiles treats them like cats, which is beyond exasperating, but also, Stiles is the son of a local deputy, and no one is going to meddle with his pets. They need to keep him.

“Do you think he needs PTSD therapy?” Stiles asks anxiously. “I mean, I know the studies are really tiny, but also I don’t know that constantly changing his diet is going to help with any bacterial issues that might be adding to it. I just read this article, and also, there’s this ad for a therapist—”

“What? No. Let’s just give him some time to settle in his new home,” Deaton says hurriedly, as Peter works up enough energy to snarl at Derek. “It might just be, uh, the change in setting.”

Talia snarls back. Peter glowers at her, because her _children_ , and they’re absolutely not going to keep this under wraps long enough to kill anybody who actually deserves it if Stiles is carting them all over the county, and then they both twitch as warm hands descend on their heads. 

“Okay, okay, but just let me know,” Stiles says. He doesn’t put his entire hand down, just his fingertips and just on the spots of their skulls that aren’t growing over with new skin. “Oh, also, Dad was asking for the adoption papers and everything so we can get that going.”

Deaton is patently relieved to have a reason to get out of the room. “Excellent,” he says. “Let me just get those and then we’ll go over the new antibiotics.”

Peter feels a growl coming up his throat again, but sluggishly, because Stiles is very good at petting and Peter would like to feel better. Still, microchips and neutering. It’ll be a shame to leave, he thinks, but perhaps they’ve gone to ground long enough.

“Hey, so, Dad isn’t actually on board yet, so when we get home, we’re gonna have to move,” Stiles whispers to them. “Sorry, I know that’s like the worst for you right now, but it’ll be easier to hide you in the attic. If you can just eat, I think it should work till I can figure out when to slip him the papers. That shouldn’t take long, he’s pretty distracted with this arson.”

Then again, Peter thinks, he does like how this boy thinks. He and Talia look at each other, and then Talia curls up around her children and noses at the back of Derek’s head. She purrs, then looks at Peter again.

They’re still her problem, Peter thinks, but he grudgingly drags himself over so that they can present a united pathetic front to Stiles. And after Stiles takes them home, and sinks to his knees in frustration as Derek just stares at a brimming food bowl for the umpteenth time, Peter musters up the energy to crawl up and take a bite.

“Hey! Oh, no, you need to eat too, but you have the—hang on, if you’re gonna steal Derek’s food, I need to dose it up first,” Stiles says, twisting around and rummaging in the freezer for Peter’s antibiotics.

Peter looks at Derek. Derek avoids his eyes. Peter slaps the bowl into Derek’s legs, because everything else aside, they need to stay here and a dead cat certainly isn’t a compelling argument to present to Stiles’ father, and Derek jerks his head up. Twitches, as Talia growls at both of them, and then bends to sniff the food. _I’m an idiot_ , says the dejected line of his shoulder.

 _Hungry_ , Peter huffs, as a piece of kibble tips over the edge of the bowl and falls right in front of him. Because he is. And he can still think, but his attention span is considerably harder to manage these days, even after you take into account his injuries, and _hungry_.

 _Hungry?_ rumbles Derek’s stomach. He shifts on his paws, and while he’s doing that, his sisters nose past him. 

Cora bumps Peter, who hisses, and they all freeze. Then Talia steps up and picks up Cora by the scruff and moves her over, and knocks more kibble to the floor while she’s at it. She ignores it while she stands over her daughters and eats around their heads. Derek glances at it, then pokes a piece with his paw. It comes near Peter and he eats it.

Derek pauses, then pokes another one. It comes to him and he tentatively crunches at it.

“Oh, good,” Stiles sighs, coming back over and picking Peter up. “At least maybe Dad won’t bring up how I took the class snake home in third grade and didn’t bring him back.”

They all stop and look at him. Which is probably too human, they’ll have to watch that, but they _did_ just all recently nearly die at the hands of other people.

Stiles still is too relieved to really register their behavior, and just shrugs. “I know, they only eat once a month so how do you even, but they didn’t put on the instructions that you needed to thaw the rat first. It’s okay, I am _researching_ all of this, one hundred percent.”

Well, at least he’s not squeamish, shrugs Talia. Peter sighs and lets Derek bat him more kibble.

* * *

The adoption papers are eventually filed, but the microchips and neutering somehow never get scheduled. This does, of course, mean that Deaton has to remain their vet, which has its downsides. But at least it means he can talk endlessly to Stiles about how cats are really very ill-suited for structured testing environments and the literature doesn’t fully capture feline intelligence in all its glory and so no, Stiles’ cats are perfectly normal.

No, Peter hasn’t forgotten he’s a person. And no, Deaton’s no closer to figuring out how to make him a person again. But life is what it is, and being a cat is not…horrible. It’s not really that much like being a werewolf either—for one thing, there’s no anchoring issue when the attention span means you forget about having an identity crisis as quickly as you fall into it—but they are fed and sheltered and cared for. And also, they don’t have to worry about getting arrested for committing crimes.

Stiles’ cats are still Peter and Talia, and Peter and Talia are not going to allow a bunch of psychotic hunters to destroy their home and get away with it. Not having opposable thumbs makes this somewhat more difficult, and having claws too short to personally deliver a killing blow makes this _infinitely_ less satisfying, but they can work with it. 

“Hey,” Stiles says one day, sitting at home with Peter cuddled to his chest, his chemistry homework beside him. He strokes his fingers up under Peter’s chin the way Peter especially enjoys, then rubs them in small circles across the shoulderblades Peter strained a little last night, because even cat flexibility has its limits. “So, listen, I know a lot of people think I’m crazy, but I usually don’t think I’m going crazy, but I need to ask you something.”

Stiles talks to them a lot like that. Peter doesn’t think anything of it, except to listen carefully, even when he appears to be sleeping, and then confer with Talia on whether they need to splatter more mouse blood over the chair of the English teacher who apparently can’t recognize Stiles’ clear post-modern influences for what they are, rather than a sad excuse to vent about a failed literary-critic career. Being a cat is _still_ not one of Peter’s life goals, but he’s already had one comfortable, safe home stolen from him. He doesn’t make the same mistake twice.

“You know how my dad’s been working on these new murders, right?” Stiles goes on, absently letting his hand trail with Peter as Peter lazily flips onto his back. “And how they’ve been really hard to crack, because it’s like people are getting into rooms when no person should be able to get into them?”

“Mmmmrr,” Peter says, arching his paws. Yes, he’s been very good, he absolutely deserves a belly-rub. He doesn’t _want_ to be a cat, but since he is, he’ll admit there are certain parts of the experience that are just untransferable to human lives.

And then he’s suddenly scooped up and put eye-level with Stiles. “Well, I had this—this really crazy idea, except it’s _not_ because I followed you last night because I calendared the dates and they match up and I was hoping it was just coincidence and you were making me regret the non-neutering but _no_ , neither of you are adding kittens to the gene pool and are you a murdercat?”

Peter blinks at Stiles. Then widens his eyes and tries again.

Stiles’ voice is shaking a little. So are his hands, and when he glances down and realizes that, he grimaces and tucks Peter’s hindlegs up against his chest for the extra support. He’s still making Peter look him in the eye, but his fingers are careful as they smooth over the long ridges of scar tissue still fading away under Peter’s fur.

“I just—I just need to know,” he says quietly. “I mean, I can’t even—these people aren’t good people, Dad’s dug up that much, so I’m guessing you have reasons, but Dad can’t figure out how else it’s happening and till they do, they’re just going to keep pressuring the police and I heard them talking about getting a new sheriff and if that happens I don’t know if Dad’s gonna get fired and—”

Damn it. Peter yowls.

“Oh! Oh, sorry, did I pinch something?” Stiles says, dropping Peter onto his lap.

Peter butts his head into Stiles’ hand, half to keep Stiles from grabbing him again, half to reassure him, and then turns around as Talia comes into the room. He yowls again, then jerks his head at her. She cocks her ear, narrows her eyes, and then yowls back. Because they are _cats_ and cat vocalizations are maddeningly crude when it comes to conveying complex concepts like _the alibi is broken, no we don’t need a new one, he needs to know, yes trust me I am the one relative who literally knows where you bury your shit for god’s sake_.

“Um,” Stiles says, and holds up his hand. He pauses, then picks up his pencil and a piece of paper. After a couple minutes of scribbling, he presents them with an alphabet grid.

Talia pokes it with her paw, then thwaps her tail along Peter’s back as he slinks down to growl at her. _This takes too long_ , she spells out for Stiles.

“I know, but I don’t think your paws are going to work on keyboards, except—oh! Modeling clay! Oh, but I can’t do that till Dad gets home and I talk him into getting carryout,” Stiles points out.

Peter hangs his head for a second. Then pushes his sister aside and laboriously spells out: _Eat sit-down dinner. We need the time with his files._

Stiles frowns. “If you can’t use a keyboard, how are you going to forge his case notes? Also…so you are murdercats?”

Talia looks at Peter, who gives his face a quick wash with one paw, because being an intelligent human mind in a cat body means you have to settle for ridiculous body-language substitutions. Then she stabs her paw down on the sheet, and pointedly drags it away from him.

 _We need to see them_ , she spells out. _Then we will tell you what to change._

“Okay,” Stiles says, and then he sucks in his breath. “Um, but my dad—”

 _We like you_ , Talia adds. She pauses, then puts her paw out again. _Do not worry, he will not get in trouble. We know what we are doing._

Stiles’ shoulders sag. “Oh, good, because I have no idea,” he says. “But I guess no time like the present to learn! All right, I’m on it.”

* * *

“Well, you’re weird, even I figured that out after a while,” Stiles says later in the week, during movie night, when all five of them are curled up with him and his popcorn and their packet of kitty jerky. He pulls a mat of fur off Cora’s hip—she’s lagging in shedding her winter fur—and then stretches over the Derek-and-Laura ball to stick it on the giant wad collecting on the endstand. “But I figured you were okay with me and Dad, and anyway, at least it’s not werewolves.”

Peter forgets which way the edge of the couch is oriented and nearly rolls off it. By the time he’s righted himself, Talia has stalked up Stiles’ torso and is nose-to-nose with him. And stays that way, even after Peter’s slapped her flank.

“Werewolves not good?” Stiles blinks. “Um, so—sorry, I didn’t know, I just—well, they come to the vet too, and—”

Talia drops back. Laura’s awake now and makes an inquiring noise, which Talia and Peter answer with identical rumbles. Oh, _do_ they. And has Deaton been introducing Stiles to werewolves without their permission?

* * *

“He’s very bright, and I thought if he was going to find his way into our world anyway—” Deaton says, and then falters.

They stare at him.

“Well, and we can’t really hide your disappearance from the other packs anymore, so they do consider this town to be open. I thought you weren’t interested in contesting it,” Deaton tries. “You’ve been cats for quite a while now, I thought you were becoming used to it.”

Derek, who has learned _something_ from all of this enforced family time, hulks up his shoulders and twists his spine till his tail bushes out, dropping a long shadow across the examining table.

“Oh,” Deaton says. He fidgets with the box of latex gloves, then sighs. “I suppose you want to handle the explanations, then.”

Why on earth do they keep him, Peter asks Talia by way of head-bump. Talia swats his ear, then glides off the table to the floor and sashays her way into Deaton’s office. Which leaves Peter to manage the children, _again_. He gives Deaton another disgruntled look before herding them out into the lobby to meet with Stiles.

* * *

“They’re murdercats,” John Stilinski repeats slowly.

“They have _reasons_ ,” Stiles insists.

John rubs his hand over the side of his face. Then stops with it halfway lowered. He squints at something on the palm, grimaces, and then lets out a sigh, picking off the cat hair. “Are these better reasons than the werewolves who attacked Scott?”

“Of course!” Stiles says. “Dad, c’mon, they’re _family_!”

“Sure,” John says, and then smiles, pained, when Stiles hugs him tight. He holds that smile till Stiles leaves the room, then turns.

Laura and Derek puff up, while Cora scoots over to Peter’s other side, which is the side nearer to the drawer where John keeps his spare gun. Peter purrs approvingly before he unsheathes his claws.

“I knew it wasn’t just goddamn shedding that this contaminates all of my goddamn crime scenes,” John says, twirling the cat hair in their faces. He and Talia match stares for an impressively long time, and then his shoulders slump. “You get Stiles hurt, you’re not even going to make it to the shelter, and trust me, that vet friend of yours isn’t going to be able to stop me.”

Peter can’t help the indignant noise that escapes him.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m his dad, has to be said,” John says. He drops the fur and straightens up. “But seriously, you can kill six people but you can’t keep my kid from meeting shady alphas in the preserve?”

The children instantly deflate. Derek makes an annoyed noise, but he’s letting it die even before Talia cuffs his head for it.

“Yeah, yeah,” John mutters again. “Fine. Just work on that, would you? Got my hands full with these so-called hunters…”

Peter and Talia look at each other. Then at John.

“I don’t actually _condone_ murder, even by cats with reasons,” John says. And stares back, for longer.

Talia finally sighs and turns around and starts grooming her tail. They should check whether John’s still human, Peter agrees, before padding off to learn what Stiles’ evening plans are and how much they need to save him from them.

* * *

And suddenly, Peter and Talia and Derek and Laura and Cora are human again, years and years after they were first turned into cats. This is very strange. There is the body to get used to again, and then the mind—they had kept up to date with human society, but it’s one thing to have the intellectual knowledge of how to use a smartphone, and another to be able to use it without being immediately distracted by the spiraling ripples whenever Stiles puts on the fishing app.

The instincts, Peter figures out. He always had his sense of self, but the instincts underpinning that…they were different. They belonged to a cat. And what a cat finds attractive is not what a person finds attractive, and suddenly, as Peter stands in Stiles’ dorm room and inhales with werewolf senses and human inclinations, he discovers he has a few other reasons for feeling murderously territorial about the place.

Peter recognizes that he needs to process this, and since he also needs a shave, a haircut, and a shower that does not involve his own tongue, he multi-tasks. He gets himself some decent clothes while he’s at it, _finally_ dumps his nieces and nephew on someone else, and then presents Stiles with a detailed thesis, broken down into executive summary, body, list of authorities and multiple appendices. Because also, he remembers living with Stiles.

“Okay,” Stiles frowns, leafing through the sheets. “Okay. Um. Admittedly, when I think about it and how you’ve traumatized every single person I ever dated besides Lydia—”

“You didn’t date her. You enabled her emotional development, forgave her for it, and then allowed her to terrorize all of the other people you’ve dated,” Peter points out.

“And I know you’re just mad about that because she could verbally eviscerate them in front of other people and you always had to wait till you could get alone with a phone and log into one of your sockpuppet accounts,” Stiles says. He picks out a sheet, snorts, and then holds it out to Peter. “But is it really necessary to put _in writing_ , and in _footnoted detail_ , a dissection of every moment where I lied to somebody I cared about because I was protecting them and how you knew it was a lie, even when you didn’t have the evidence, because you know every tell I have, which proves you’re going to be better for me—”

“Yes,” Peter says, folding his arms over his chest and staring at Stiles.

“You’re not my murdercat now, it’s creepy when you do that,” Stiles says. He allows the sheet to wave in the slight breeze from the A/C. “Well, I know exactly how often you like your anal glands expressed.”

Peter smiles. “I know you do, Stiles.”

Stiles flushes and drops the paper in the ensuing arm-flail. “What? No, that’s not what I—this is what I mean, you’re not my _cat_ , and—and I meant I know all the dirty little things about you too. I know the difference between your kills just because you were playing and got bored and got careless, and when you did it because you were so angry you just didn’t even think about keeping them alive. I know you taught Derek how to hack up hairballs on command not just because it gave you another little soldier in your one-cat terror campaign against Dr. Deaton’s sister, but because you actually like the way he pretends he’s not copying you when he is. I know you still have bad dreams about the fire, and I know Talia and I are the only ones who can poke you out of it—”

“I know you do, Stiles,” Peter says. Not smiling now, but no less sincere about it.

“I,” Stiles says, and drops his hands. He looks at Peter, then at the papers. Then at Peter. “I know you think I care too much about stupid things. Like helping when I don’t need to, and getting in trouble because of that, and making you get me out of it.”

“Well, no, I don’t think you know much about that,” Peter says, and then he points at the proposal. “That’s why I wrote it. Because—”

“You were saving that up the whole time you were a cat,” Stiles says savagely, ripping the papers off him and stalking across the room to take Peter by a double handful of shirt. “I _know_ that, you idiot, I kept finding your proto-lists and now you’re, you’re a _person_ and I can—”

Yes, they can. And Peter missed this. He’d forgotten how much he missed this, to be honest, being a cat. 

Or if he’s truly honest, he never had this, as a cat or as the person he was before he was a cat. One person, who’s seen him bared and naked and imperfect, who’s learned all his secrets whether he volunteered them or not, and who still wants to share a life with him. Who he wants to share a life _with_. 

He didn’t even get to sex till the second appendix. There was too much else to say first. But, Peter thinks, that is _also_ an argument in favor.

Of course, this is all still Deaton’s fault.

* * *

“It’s not really because he’s now a grown man instead of a cat,” Scott says uncomfortably. “We all understand that you don’t just adjust overnight, and some things carry over—we’re werewolves, it’s kind of similar.”

“Peter’s also back to being a werewolf now,” Stiles reminds them.

Scott sighs. “Yeah, we know, and look, we’re not trying to start a fight, we’re just trying to explain why we all—you wanted to know why we don’t come over so much now and it’s just—”

“It’s just when he’s all curled up like that with his head in your lap and that is _cat_ purring, not werewolf purring, and you are literally skritching his ears and that’s why he has sex-face, we _know_ we’re gonna have a dead body to get rid of,” Erica breaks in, with an exasperated look at Scott. She pushes his shoulder as he flushes. “Nobody needs to see that, Stiles. We’re still pack, it’s cool, we’ll time-share with the homicidal psycho. Just text us when you’re done.”

Being a cat did teach Peter a few things, and among them was the value of not letting human pettiness get in the way of life’s pleasures. He _could_ get up and defend his honor, but that would mean using muscles that have just achieved a sublime balance between relaxed and tingling from the lovely head-massage Stiles is giving him. And leaving Stiles’ lap. Which he doesn’t want to do. So he’s not. He only _thought_ he knew how to give zero fucks before, frankly.

“Well, excuse you for suddenly getting so sensitive, Miss I Only Do Oral When There’s an Audience,” Stiles snorts. He finishes up whatever he was doing on his phone and then shifts his legs off the couch, which means that for some godawful reason, he thinks they should get up. “Speaking of, unlike every time I go over to restock your kitchen with bloodstain remover, we’re fully clothed. I don’t see how this is any worse than when it’s roast chicken night at Scott’s and the Hales magically show up.”

“It’s not. Because they are equally creepy,” Erica says.

Scott frowns. “Hey.”

“Listen, I know you have your true alpha thing and therefore you’re too shiny for the filth to stick, but…it is,” Erica says, nodding vigorously. “And honestly, even when Derek and Laura and Cora were cats, it was still pretty creepy to walk in and see them all sitting around your head staring down at you till you woke up from doing homework and fed them.”

“They just really like Mom’s chicken and they couldn’t work the lock on our kitchen door!” Scott protests. 

“But they have hands now, and they _still_ do that,” Isaac points out.

Scott sighs. “That’s because Mom got Stiles to upgrade the lock and they haven’t really been not-cats for that long, and—look, we’re getting distracted. Stiles, really, we came over because I haven’t heard from Allison in a couple hours and I thought you and she had—”

“I know, we did, and this isn’t her texting me back that they’re almost here?” Stiles says, frowning and holding up his phone.

Damn it. Just for making him get off Stiles’ lap, Peter is going to murder the next person who comes through the door.

It’s Deaton. With a pet carrier in either hand. So Peter doesn’t murder him, because Peter is busy grabbing Stiles’ wrist to confirm his fingers and thumb are still there, and _almost_ not wanting to kill Scott for the sympathetic look Scott shoots his way.

“Listen, you go cat again, I’m right after you and we’ll feed all the druids to Lydia, we talked about this,” Stiles says, low and out of the corner of his mouth, without looking back at Peter so he doesn’t draw more attention to it. He lets Peter hold onto him as he slowly crouches down to see into the carriers.

“It wasn’t me,” Deaton says to the other werewolves circling him up. “I walked up after it happened, and—”

There’s a thump inside one of the carriers. Deaton stops, breathes carefully, and then sets the carriers down. He hesitates again, till Scott moves over to stand next to him, and then opens each of the doors.

“Um,” Stiles says, squinting into the carriers.

“They don’t smell like cats,” Isaac says doubtfully.

Peter sighs, and tries not to show how relief is rippling down his shoulders and back with it. “That’s because they’re not. They’re—”

“Oh, my _God_ ,” Scott says, strained enough that they all look up at him. He’s staring at the crossbow and handgun Deaton is trying to give him. “Oh, no, do you mean—”

Something thumps again and Peter looks down. A quivering nose briefly shows, and then there’s a scuffle as the larger one forces itself out first. The smaller one batters its back with obvious frustration, then hops nimbly over it and stares defiantly around at them. Behind it, the larger one adopts a stony squint, its ears stiffly pointed back from its head.

“Um,” Stiles says. He scratches his cheek. “So…murderbuns?”

Peter starts to laugh, and that’s when he learns that rabbits are, in fact, capable of significant momentum. True, they don’t have the proper claws to rip a gut open, but internal injuries aren’t entirely out of the question.

“I really don’t know what happened,” Deaton says mournfully, as Scott hastily pries the rabbits off Peter. “They were just sitting there in the parking lot, trying to reload the crossbow.”

“Murderbuns. Of course,” Stiles sighs. He gives Peter a half-hearted annoyed look, then just tips Peter’s face into his shoulder to muffle the laughter. “Okay, well, we should get them food, and a rabbit hutch, and—Chris, Allison, I am literally the only person in the room who might be able to figure this out, so enough with the fluffy look of death, all right? We—Erica?”

“@Murderbuns,” she corrects, snapping away with her phone. “On it. We’ve got ten followers already, and if Chris does that deathglare again, I bet we can nail a sponsorship before the week is out.”

“Erica,” Scott says disapprovingly, as Stiles gives up and twists Peter’s head over so he can laugh into Peter’s shoulder. 

Spending years and years as a cat was not in Peter’s plans at any stage of his life. But yes, it was worth it, every second.

Which is _still_ Deaton’s fault.

**Author's Note:**

> This is more of a sketch than my usual style, but I do consider this a finished story. Sometimes, with some jokes, it's best not to get too into the details.
> 
> True cat people know when you speak of expressing anal glands, you speak of pure and unfailing devotion.


End file.
